How to use Twitter

How to use Twitter – a quick guide

What is twitter?

• A social networking and micro-blogging service where users have

140 characters to say whatever they wish, known as “tweets”

• Users are followed and have followers: tweets of users you are

following will appear in your news feed and your tweets will appear in

the news feeds of those who follow you

• Most if not all Colleges are on Twitter - Cornwall College has among

the largest amount of followers, with more than 8000. A growing

number of FE leaders and opinion formers tweet.

Why is it so popular?

Builds communitiesDuring the recent riots in England, Twitter users organised a mass clean up of the affected areas just by communicating on Twitter #twitterwombles

Ability to communicate with important and influential peopleThe President of the United States is on there... @BarackObama

Freedom of speechTwitter users exposed Ryan Giggs for having an affair even though he had paid for a super injunction

Drives traffic to websitesUse interesting/enticing tweets to direct followers to our website which can highlight our services to Colleges

Go to www.twitter.com. Sign in to your team or

individual account.

This is the home page for the AoC account –which is managed by the Comms team – but the layout is the same for any Twitter account.

Tweets of the organisations/people we are following

Following=number of organisations/people AoC is following and whose tweets appear on the home pageFollowers=number of organisations/people following AoC. AoC’s tweets will appear on their home page.

Click on ‘@AoC_info’ to view messages written to and about AoC. These are public messages which are viewable by all.

Clicking on ‘Direct messages’ lets you see messages sent directly to an account and vice versa. These messages are only viewable between the sender and recipient.

Click on ‘Profile’ to see an account’s tweets.

To tweet, click on ‘Home’. Then type your message in the ‘What’s happening?’ box using 140 characters or less.

You can use www.bitly.com to create shortened links, to give you more space in which to Tweet. Bitly allows you to see how many people click any link.

Bitly converts long URLs into smaller ones, usually around 14 characters. It also shows you how many people have visited that website page already.

Paste the converted URL into the ‘What’s Happening’ box along with your message. Click ‘update’.

Your tweet will then appear in the Home screen.

Help is available by clicking here or contact the Communications Team. Enjoy tweeting!